In order to properly maintain image forming devices such as printers, copiers, facsimile, and multi-function peripherals, remote management systems have been designed to collect various items of management information, such as maintenance management information, working state and failure information of the image forming devices. In past remote management systems, each image forming device may have been equipped with a communication device. The communication devices may send management information to a central management device. Thus, device management is performed individually for each image forming device. However, presently, most remote management systems are networked based. Thus, most image forming devices may be coupled to a communication network so that the connection between the image forming devices and the central management device is established via the network.
Presently, most remote management systems query the image forming devices connected thereto at predetermined intervals of time in order to keep track of the current states of these devices. However, querying the image forming devices only at predetermined intervals of time may not allow the remote management systems to timely identify issues with the image forming device.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system and method that overcomes the above. The system and method would provide for a remote management system to dynamically request a status report from an image forming device.